The Myriad Paths of Uzumaki Naruto: Seals
by U.N.Owen Troper
Summary: Due to a quirk of fate, Naruto begins learning Fuuinjutsu two years before his graduation. The Ninja world will never know what hit it...
1. Chapter 1

The present is the product of the past, change the past and a different future will occur, the ripples of one small change spreading with time to encompass the entire world.

For example: What could happen if a certain villain took action two years earlier than planned, a time when our protagonist, less jaded by the hatred of his village is more open minded and receptive to new ideas?

~pagebreak~

Hiruzen Sarutobi, the third hokage, known as the god of shinobi, student of two hokage, and teacher of three of konoha's greatest warriors looked solemnly at the at the sunny-haired, unusually quiet ten year old sitting opposite him. Not for the first time, and likely not for the last, he cursed the boy's teacher, Mizuki, and the ultimate cause of the night's events. The traitor had made a bid for the scroll of sealing, a repository of the most powerful and dangerous techniques ever developed by the village's greatest minds, and while he had been stopped, by the child in front of him no less, he had let slip a certain S-class secret that he had not intended for the boy to learn of until his graduation.

And so here he was, sitting in his office in front of the saviour of his beloved village and desperately trying to find a way to gently explain to a boy he considered a second grandson why he had the most powerful demon in the world resting in his stomach.

Before he could begin, Naruto spoke up. "So, uh old man, is what Mizuki-teme said true?" "Am I really the" he swallowed "the fox?" "No" the elderly leader swiftly replied, knowing he could at least lay that fear to rest "you are not the fox, just the same as the prison cell holding your former teacher is not Mizuki. You are what are called by experts a 'jinchuuriki' a human prison for a tailed beast, made possible by seals"

Naruto perked up at this, some of the brightness returning to his eyes as he asked with obvious interest "seals? I think Iruka-sensei talked about them a couple of times, what are they?" The third smiled, glad of the shift in topic to one of scholarly interest, a rare occurrence with Naruto. He knew, despite the reports from the academy of the boy's academic failings, that Naruto could be a good student, great even, with his nigh-limitless stamina and enthusiasm. He was simply incapable of concentrating on something he was disinterested in, a fact many teachers took advantage of to discourage his progress. When motivated to learn and provided with a topic he had interest in, he could learn at an incredible rate, as proved by his acquisition of the kage bushin technique from the scroll.

"The sealing arts are one of the most obscure and difficult to master branch of techniques in the shinobi arts, I myself am competent at them, but both my old student Jiraya, and his student, the Fourth Hokage, are the masters at them, capable of incredible feats such as sealing tailed beasts and creating techniques like the hiraishin, the Fourths strongest technique, which made him nearly unbeatable. It was the reason why he is still considered the strongest shinobi ever."

Naruto was gobsmacked. He came into this office wondering if he was a monster, despite Iruka's reassurances and now he was hearing about this secret shinobi art, which was so powerful it could defeat the biju, beings stronger that any shinobi could ever be. And the Fourth, his Idol, his hero, his _dream_ was a master at these seals! There was no question about it in Naruto's mind. He wanted to become the hokage, and surpass all the others, if these seals could make him even half as strong as the greatest of the hokage, then the time would be well spent. His mind made up, he raised his head from his thoughts and asked the old man "how do I learn?"


	2. Chapter 2

"Life is good" Hiruzen Sarutobi mused as he sat in his office, working through the early morning paperwork. Over the past two years Konoha had finally recovered from the disaster that was the Kyuubi's unexpected release and was back in what passed for an economic boom in a ninja village. Business was thriving and the ninja corps were back to their pre-attack numbers. Still a bit lacking in experienced jounin and chuunin but that too would change over the next two or three years. Just yesterday the latest group to join the ninja forces had graduated, and were due to meet their potential teachers for their final test in two days time, after the weekend. With them, was Uzumaki Naruto, who had held to his agreement to wait until he was eleven, rather than trying again to graduate early again.

The boy had taken to Fuuinjutsu like a fish to water, astounding in itself considering the amount of studying and theory the subject required. The fact that he had managed to progress so far without a dedicated teacher, just some occasional advice, what he could gather from the library and his own ingenuity, made it even more amazing. It was a rare day indeed, when the jinchuuriki did not spend his free time holed up in his apartment with a team of clones working on another of his crazy ideas. Recently, due to lack of space in his own 3-room apartment, some clones had taken to occupying the surrounding empty ones too.

Turning to the window to look at the view of the village (one of the many perks of the job in his opinion) he froze. And blinked.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Resting his forehead in one hand and sighing he called out to his guards "Neko, rally some of the off duty jounin and chuunin to restrain that _thing_. Tora, get me Naruto. The real one if you please."

The two masked ninja nodded and flickered away.

Two minutes later, the culprit arrived, ANBU body-flickering him into the office. It was obvious that Tora had had to wake him up; he was still clad in pyjamas, with rumpled hair, half closed eyes and mouth open mid-yawn.

"Hey old man, what's the big deal, getting me up this early in the morning?"

The Hokage turned and pointed out the window.

Naruto blinked and rubbed his eyes, before finally deciding that the sight in front of him was not a figment of his imagination.

"Huh, that wasn't supposed to happen."

Sarutobi sighed "and what was supposed to happen?"

"Hang on a sec" Naruto raised his hands into the ram seal and created a single shadow clone "get me a copy of the memories of the clone in charge of this mess" the clone nodded and dispersed into smoke.

On the other side of Konoha, a Naruto standing on a rooftop paused in his manic laughing long enough to create a clone and dispel it, before resuming his laughter.

"Gah!" Naruto cried out in pain, one hand cradling his forehead while the other grabbed hold of the desk to steady himself.

Sarutobi raised an eyebrow "just how long have you kept that clone alive?"

"About two months" Naruto replied, collapsing into a chair opposite the Hokage.

A second eyebrow rose to meet the first "two months? How? And dare I ask why?"

"The longer my clones stay the more independent and different to me they become. They come up with different ideas and think differently to me. As for the how, I made a giant scroll into a chakra storage that I fill and my clones drain to sustain themselves"

Torn between amusement and exasperation, the old Hokage got back to the situation at hand "so, just what is it that you've unleashed on my poor unsuspecting village?"

Naruto straightened, headache clearing "to put it bluntly, it's a test bed"

"A test bed?"

Nodding, Naruto elaborated "I had a bunch of seals related to motion, replication, sensing along with a few others worked out in theory, but I really needed to test them out on a working model to make sure they worked as planned and work out any unexpected kinks, so I gave the job to a free group of clones yesterday evening before I went to sleep."

"And how did this resulted in that?" here the Hokage pointed again to the tentacle mass floating over the village.

"Eheheheh… I guess they got carried away?"

"Again" Sarutobi corrected him.

"Again" Naruto accepted

"Naruto…" The Hokage began "your clones are _psychotic_."

"Hey!" Naruto stood up indignantly "my clones are no crazier that I am!"

"…"

"…"

"…"

*sigh* "I really walked into that one didn't I?"

Humming his agreement, Sarutobi once again steered the conversation back on track. "So how do we get rid of it?"

"Ah! That's easy!" Once again Naruto made the seal for his favourite technique, this time making ten clones, which saluted the original and leapt out of the open window, heading towards the escaped monstrosity. "They just need to disconnect the chakra storage seal matrix that serves as the power source and the whole thing should deactivate."

Sarutobi frowned "what will happen to the body? I don't need my ninja cleaning up your mess"

Naruto waved his concerns off "the whole body is a chakra construct, similar to my kage bunshin technique. That was the result of one of the replication seals I wanted to test. It worked as you can see" he delivered the last with more than a little glee.

"Yes" Sarutobi replied wryly "the proof is right outside my window attempting to molest my townspeople."

"Well" Naruto began, getting up from his seat and stretching "If that's all you need me for, I'll take my leave then _Hokage-sama_" he gave a teasing grin to the old ninja in front of him.

"Go on, get lost _brat_" Sarutobi replied, matching his grin. As Naruto jumped though the window, heading back to his apartment his grandfather in all but name shouted after him "and hurry up and take this damned hat!"

~pagebreak~

Naruto grinned as he sped along the rooftops back to his house. He hadn't had a chance to play pranks for two years, seeing as he spent practically every free moment of his time working with his clone teams on expanding his sealing repertoire. Of course, this didn't stop some of his more… enthusiastic clones from deliberately misinterpreting his instructions to safely test out a few seals in controlled conditions as permission to unleash the giant spaghetti monster on the village.

Finally he reached his apartment. Glancing at the clock he decided it was unfortunately too late to crawl back into bed, weekend or not, so he'd better get dressed. He had finally gotten rid of his old kill-me orange jumpsuits nearly two years ago, when he had come to two inescapeable conclusions about his art: first, that scrolls were the lifeblood of any fuuinjutsu specialist and second, he needed more pockets. His new shinobi outfit fitted that requirement perfectly, as it was practically covered in the things. He was even lucky to find some that were his favourite colour, if darker than his jumpsuits, which had the swirling emblem that he liked; the shopkeeper had grudgingly said something about them being an old design from a former village called Uzu.

Leaving his own apartment, he turned left and entered the next door down, waving a hand in greeting to the clones that looked up from their work. The entire apartment was full of tables and chairs, or at least whatever could be scavenged to serve as them. Each makeshift table was covered in scrolls and stacks of paper which were covered with seals, notes and calculations that the clones poured over in groups. There was a pleasant buzz of conversation as clones working together on the various projects discussed sealing theory, test results, and laying bets on the likely teams the new genin would be sorted into.

Naruto weaved his way through the clutter with a practiced ease, taking a minute to press his hand on the large scroll sitting in the corner of the room, refilling it with its daily dose of chakra. After that he began his favourite part of the day, working his way through the research teams.

A large part of Naruto's incredible progress in Fuuinjutsu was thanks to his kage bunshin clones. Despite looking, acting and thinking like him, they were pure chakra constructs and provided he kept the scroll they replenished their chakra from charged, they never stopped working. They didn't need to eat or sleep, and could work around the clock. The results were obvious: Naruto had surpassed the third in terms of knowledge on the subject and could be considered second only to the legendary Jiraya of the Sannin in prowess.

Unfortunately, he had recently come across a small problem: konoha's libraries had no more to teach him. Most books on the art agreed that there were three broad levels to Fuuinjutsu: Chakra seals, Elemental seals and Conceptual seals.

Chakra seals were the first level, but also the largest, and despite its designation as the first level of sealing could become indescribably complex and powerful. They dealt with pretty much anything that dealt with manipulating pure chakra, from simple storage seals all the way up to Biju suppression seals, which were far from simple.

Elemental seals dealt with the manipulation of the five elements, as well as elemental chakra, and made up the second level of sealing. Naruto had yet to access this level, simply because he had no idea where to start. He had tried building several seals from scratch, but nothing he tried could manipulate the elements and he had no idea how to even produce elemental chakra. He either needed some seals to reverse engineer, or a teacher. Unfortunately seals of such a high level were far beyond an academy student's clearance, and he would have more luck fighting S-rank missing nin than getting Jiraya to come to Konoha.

Conceptual seals were of such difficulty and rarity that they were practically the stuff of legends. Anything that manipulated or violated the fundamentals of the universe came under conceptual sealing: space and time manipulation, reality warping, conceptual actualisation, summoning or binding divine beings. The Hiraishin, the fourth Hokage's prized technique, manipulated space and time to allow instantaneous teleportation, a feat that was considered nearly impossible. Like elemental sealing, Naruto had no idea how to go about attempting to do such things. Unlike elemental sealing, he had no intentions of trying to find out. Conceptual sealing took the meaning of the word danger to a whole new level, as while the previous levels world at worst kill a few clones, messing up the very fabric of reality was a far worse, and Naruto had no intention of accidentally actualising the concept of nonexistence on himself.

As such he was forced to expand his library of first level seals. This was not as bad as it sounded though, the field was vast and even with his clones Naruto knew he would never learn everything about the art in his lifetime. Still, the old man had told him he was expecting Jiraya to actually come to Konoha in a few months, perhaps he could beg a few low level elemental seals off the man?

~pagebreak~

_Author's Note:_

_Hello everyone, and welcome to the prologue and first chapter of Seals! I first came up with the idea for this fic when I was penning down ideas for a bunch of Naruto AUs. This was the most fleshed out of the ideas, so I got down to planning it. As of the time I am writing this, I have the timeline plotted up to the timeskip, and let me tell you: I'm looking forward to the chuunin exams already._

_As you can probably tell from my profile, this is my first fic that is longer than a few hundred words long, and I am currently self-betaing my work. I will try my best, but unfortunately the powers of the mighty spellchecker are not infinite and mistakes will creep in from time to time. I ask in advance that you forgive any future misspellings or grammatical errors._

_About Jutsu names: I am a big believer in keeping technique names in Romaji form, it just feels right to me and it's what I prefer in the fics I read. Unfortunately, I am planning on introducing many new techniques, mostly Fuuinjutsu and my language skills frankly suck. As such I am using two translators in tandem to translate English to Kanji, then to Romaji. It seems to work fine but if there is a mistake in my naming, that will be why. I am taking efforts to make profiles of each new technique I create which I will post here on the chapter they debut._

_About Naruto's Skills: Besides his sealing abilities and attitude change, Naruto's skills are not that different to cannon!ruto. I am trying to make a different Naruto, not a god mode self insert or marty stu. Should I ever unknowingly cross that line, please inform me so I can have the tumour removed. Naruto is, inevitably going to end up stronger to a degree, you can't just make someone a seals master without them being stronger for it, but he should still be beatable._

_About Team 7: I like Sasuke and Sakura. Sasuke is very much likeable in some of the fics I've read when he isn't being bashed or given the Kishi-treatment, and I consider Sakura not being treated as a fangirl caricature as a mark of a decent fic. I plan on upsetting a few trends with this fic with regards to these two._

_Thanks for reading thus far. I hope you have enjoyed yourselves!_


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